Keynote Reference Guide

[HwitVlf]

That clock is neat!
Since you and Verdite are the resident Metasequoia experts, do either of you know a way to get Meta to actually 'create' the mirrored half of a model? I was making a person using the mirror option but the mirrored half disappears in Motion mode.   

[airflamesred]

Well I guess you have to freeze the mirror before the keynote stage. Otherwise your walk cycls is gonna look a bit weird.

I'm thinking Model-UVs- bones/anim-freeze and then mesh paint as the way forward atm

The 'scene' button, which adds an animatable (is that a word) camera seems to work in the same way as the rest. ie move camera or focal point and add keyframes. No problems so far.
Next on my list is to see how a lot of these elements interact. So morphs and selection to break something into pieces (thinking SOM usage)

As you see with the clock I added the mqx file. This is the one containing the motion data? So to get to SOM are you using this or the .x file?

EDIT - Just realised possible conflict in my info above. Definitely freeze your mirror before keynote, but no need to freeze patch if using sub-d

[Verdite]

I think Airflames is right on this one... Though outside of motion mode all you need to is select the whole model, then hit selected - mirror - whichever axis you need. What i do is i move the model slightly outwards from the y axis... And mirror then. If i want to move this mirrored piece, i select it, copy it, then delete and paste it as a new obj. If i want to make sure all the faces join perfectly, keep the two parts slightly apart, select with the rectangle down the centre of both, then use "scale" to bring the two parts together. If the models a bit distorted i select all and scale until its right.

[HwitVlf]

Great- thanks   I tried both methods and they worked for what I was asking. I've made mirrored things for non-animated models before, but I always left them halved because Meta auto-adds the mirrored half when you save as an X.

On the subject of MQX files, I noticed there's a plugin that saves Keynote files in MKX format, but I wasn't able to understand any decisive benefit. It says something about the MQX file just records bone positions for the animation but not the bones themselves (which are in the MQO).

To answer your question (AirFlamesRed) about which animated file SoM uses: SoM's converting tool (x2mdl) uses the 'Asset Import Project" import processing so we should be able to import many animation formats, but Assimp doesn't support MQX.  So for Keynote at least, we're using animated X.  

[airflamesred]

I think freeze mirror might be a tickable option on export. As verdite sais you can always cut half away and re mirror if you want to change anything later.

Here is a quick something I threw together this morning. I'm not sure how it will load but I have animated the camera so you can press the 'scene' button and you may have to press 'on camera'.

Another thing on the upside is that the anchorless bones (mesh-ref mat) seems to work if you have more than one mat attatched to the mesh or meshes.
(see the sword), I don't see how this works but is really good news if you are using more than one tex on a model

[airflamesred]

I found an fbx. plugin- any use? I haven't tried it cause neither bryce or terragen support it

[Verdite]

That model and animation just made my day. Really nice. Loved how you have the first model as one then two halves :)

[HwitVlf]

That's a neat sword design. If we get the add-on section up and running here, you should add it as a regular SoM weapon. The animated model loaded into SoM pretty well. It looks like Mick's MDL converter doesn't support colored polygons though, and the 'hidden' objects become visible when exporting to X format- that answers one question I had. Attached are some fun pics and the SoM model 

I wasn't familiar with FBX, but I looked into it a little and it sounds like it's the standard 3DSMax export format. Is it the plugin suite here that you were referring to? Since Max has import/export plugins for just about everything, it could let us have a lot more flexibility with SoM models.

I did a rough translation and tried to load an FBX into meta but it didn't work as I expected- no animation or skeleton information was imported- just loaded the model as posed in a specific frame during the animation. The objects that seem to be part of the skeleton were all blank. I may be doing something wrong- especially since the model went X to MAX to FBX to Meta. Anyways, a neat find. I'll try it out more when I get the time.

[airflamesred]

Thanks guys
Its a bit sloppy - the large half pokes through the sword at one point but hey, nver done this before. The boolean cut needs cleaning up but I must say I really enjoyed it. Thera may be another way round the whole apple showing on export- I'll take a look

The sword design was from a pic over at DA. Something to do with MMD

If you have max, did that read the fbx?. I don't think meta does unless you translated the import one plugin. If assimp doesn't support it then is it any use?

[airflamesred]

Yeah no joy with that plugin. MInd you Horsetail isn't claiming to import anim so I dont really see what its pupose is

.http://nora3d.blog68.fc2.com/blog-category-2.html Some keynote stuff here